Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dreamland, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Pain Management and the Normalization of Narcotics
The Drug Business
Stigma, Shame, and the Opiate Epidemic
Community as a Remedy to Addiction
Summary
Analysis
Robert Beradinelli, an addict in his fifties, is overjoyed when the Xalisco Boys come to Santa Fe in 1997. Before, he’d had to purchase his drugs on the streets.
Berardinelli does business with the Xalisco Boys because it’s more convenient than purchasing drugs on the street. The importance Berardinelli places on convenience parallels the mindset of the doctors and patients that propelled the pain movement.
Themes
By this time, heroin has given Enrique the life he’d always dreamt of. He’d escaped poverty and sold heroin under bosses who exploited him, but now, finally, he has the chance to start his own cell. Enrique originally planned to set up shop in Albuquerque, but on the advice of a local addict, he switched to Santa Fe, where there is no competition. He recruits village boys to work underneath him. As Enrique’s business flourishes, he is able to pay for his sister’s quinceañera, hire a maid for his mother, and pay the college tuition of another sister. Enrique soon expands his market from Santa Fe to Chimayo, New Mexico. There, he supplies Chimayo’s heroin trafficking clans with their product.
Again, Quinones depicts Enrique’s tenure in the heroin business as a progress narrative of upward mobility, aligning his story with archetypal narratives of hard work and success in the legitimate business world. Quinones also clarifies that Enrique was involved in the distribution cell that sold to the heroin clans in Chimayo.
Themes
Robert Berardinelli relishes the convenience Enrique’s heroin cell affords him; it is as simple as ordering delivery pizza. What’s more, Enrique’s heroin is purer and more reliable than the heroin of years past. Berardinelli also admires the Xalisco Boys for not using their own product, which is rare among drug dealers. The Xalisco Boys don’t want to get high: they only want money. One day, the Xalisco group asks Berardinelli if he can get them a car. They pay him in drugs, and a series of exchanges like this continue to unfold. Berardinelli has frequent encounters with Enrique, of whom he grows fond: “Because of the way this business model ran, it was so much more relaxed,” recalls Berardinelli.
The Xalisco Boys’ reliable, “relaxed,” customer-oriented services make Berardinelli into a loyal customer—so loyal, that he could be convinced to do favors for them in exchange for drugs. Berardinelli’s observation that the Xalisco Boys only wanted money shows that accumulation of wealth is a central motivating factor in the Xalisco drug trade. Comparing the Xalisco system to a pizza delivery service aligns the illicit drug trade with legitimate businesses.
Themes
